Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The Introduction of a Short-Term Earnings-Related Parental Leave Benefit System and Differential Effects on Employment Intentions

German family policy underwent a reform in 2007, when the new instrument of “Elterngeld” replaced “Erziehungsgeld.” The two programs differ in various respects. We studied the intended effects on the labor supply of young mothers by comparing these women’s employment intentions before and after the reform. We conducted separate investigations of high- and low-income women, who were treated differently ...

Maternal Employment Effects of Paid Parental Leave

We study the short, medium, and longer run employment effects of a substantial change in the parental leave benefit program in Germany. In 2007, a means-tested parental leave transfer program that had paid benefits for up to two years was replaced by an earnings related transfer which paid benefits for up to one year. The reform generated winners and losers with heterogeneous response incentives. We ...

A Note on the High Stability of Happiness: The Minimal Effects of a Nuclear Catastrophe on Life Satisfaction

Maternal Employment and Happiness: The Effect of Non-Participation and Part-Time Employment on Mothers’ Life Satisfaction

In contrast to unemployment, the effect of non-participation and parttime employment on subjective well-being has much less frequently been the subject of economists’ investigations. In Germany, many women with dependent children are involuntarily out of the labor force or in part-time employment because of family constraints (e.g., due to lack of available and appropriate childcare). Using data from ...

Do Means-tested Benefits Alleviate Poverty?: Evidence on Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom from the Luxembourg Income Study

This article analyses the relationship between means-tested benefits and poverty in Western Europe. Means-tested benefits, as social assistance or housing benefits, are designed as safeguards against poverty for the low-income strata of the population, but our knowledge on their impact is fairly limited. How effective are they in reducing poverty rates? To what degree can they fill the gap that income ...

Is There Income Poverty in Western Europe? Methodological Pitfalls in the Measurement of Poverty in a Comparative Perspective

Private Pensions - A Viable Alternative? Their Distributive Effects in a Comparative Perspective

The incentive for working hard: explaining hours worked differences in the US and Germany

Virtual Assisted Self Interviewing (VASI): An Expansion of Survey Data Collection Methods to the Virtual Worlds by Means of VDCI

Changes in communication technology have allowed for the expansion of data collection modes in survey research. The proliferation of the computer has allowed the creation of web and computer assisted auto-interview data collection modes. Virtual worlds are a new application of computer technology that once again expands the data collection modes by VASI (Virtual Assisted Self Interviewing). The Virtual ...

When equity matters for marital stability: Comparing German and U.S. couples

Comparing West Germany and the U.S., we analyze the association between equity—in terms of the relative gender division of paid and unpaid work hours—and the risk of marriage dissolution. Our aim is to identify under what conditions equity influences couple stability. We apply event-history analysis to marriage histories using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for West Germany and the Panel ...